On the global maximum of the solution to a stochastic heat equation with compact-support initial data
Consider a stochastic heat equation ∂tu=κ ∂xx2u+σ(u)ẇ for a space–time white noise ẇ and a constant κ>0. Under some suitable conditions on the initial function u0 and σ, we show that the quantities lim sup t→∞t−1sup x∈Rln El(|ut(x)|2) and lim sup t→∞t−1ln E(sup x∈R|ut(x)|2) are equal, as well as bounded away from zero and infinity by explicit multiples of 1/κ. Our proof works by demonstrating quantitatively that the peaks of the stochastic process x↦ut(x) are highly concentrated...